Australian Escape: Her Hottest Summer Yet / The Heat of the Night

“Me?” she said, flicking a quick glance at the now-snoring lump under the table. “A threat?”

Jonah shot her a flat look. She was the biggest threat he’d met in a long time.

By the rise and fall of her chest she got his meaning loud and clear.

Then, frowning, she slipped her fingers down the length of beads and stared at the little bits of pineapple bobbing on top of her drink. Most likely because of the elephant in the room. Or not in the room as he hadn’t showed up.

Rubbing a hand up the back of his neck, Jonah wished he’d simply called Luke and asked where the hell he was. Or at the very least what his intentions towards her were, if any. Hell, he’d done such a fine job avoiding the woman, for all Jonah knew she and Luke could have been dating for days.

That thought clouded his vision something mad, but didn’t put a dent in the attraction that rode over him like a rogue wave. The only right thing to do was leave. Walk away. Avoid more. At least until he knew where they all stood.

He quietly schooled his features, looked casually over the restaurant, towards the still-empty doorway. And set his feet to the floor as he made to leave her be.

When the waiter came shuffling up. “Oh, good, your company’s finally arrived. Are you ready to order now?”

Jonah glanced back at Avery to find her blushing madly now, nose buried in the menu.

“Um...he’s... I guess. Just... Can I have a second, please? Sorry!”

When she looked up at the waiter she shot him her sunshine smile, catching Jonah in its wake. The effect was like a smack to the back of the head, rattling his thoughts till he could no longer quite put them back in order.

“This is my first time here,” she said. “What would you recommend?”

Jonah jabbed a finger at the rump steak. “Rare.” Motioned to his friend under the table and said, “Two.”

“Make it three,” said Avery, picking out a pricey glass of red wine to go along with it.

When the waiter wandered off, she lowered the menu slowly, frowned at it a second, before taking a breath and looking up at him. Clearly bemused as to how they’d got there. Just the two of them. Having lunch.

He wished he knew himself.

Avery shuffled on her chair and said, “So, Jonah, did you always want to work with boats growing up?”

“Boats? We’re really heading down that path?”

“Boats. The weather. You pick!” She threw her arms out in frustration. “Or you can just sit there all silent and broody for all I care. I was perfectly happy to have lunch on my own before you came along.”

“Were you, now?”

She glared at him then, the truth hovering between them.

She grabbed her pink drink and slugged the thing down till it was empty. The fact that she thought she needed booze to get through lunch with him was actually kind of comforting. Then she licked her lips in search of stray pink drink. And Jonah had never felt less comfortable in his life.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, hoping the prickle of stubble might wake him the hell up, but instead finding his cheeks covered in overly long scruff. The lack of a close shave was just about the only throwback to his old life. When the idea of lunch with a pretty girl was as normal to him as a day spent in the sea, not something fraught with malignant intentions and mortal peril.

He dropped his calloused fingers to his lap, so like his father’s fingers.

She wanted to talk boats? What the hell. “My father worked on boats.”

“Oh, a family tradition.”

Jonah coughed out a laugh. His father wouldn’t have thought so. As brutally proud as Jonah was of everything Charter North had become, he knew his father wouldn’t have understood. The types of boats, or the number. Karl North had only ever owned the one boat, the Mary-Jane, named after Jonah’s mother. And in the end she’d killed him.

“He was a lobster man,” Jonah went on. “A diver. Over the reefs. Live collection, by hand.” No big hauls, just long hours, negligible conversation, even less outward displays of affection, not much energy left for anything not on the boat.

Avery picked up on the “Was?”

“He died at sea when I was seventeen. He’d taught me a thing or two about boats before then, though. I could pull a boat engine apart and put it back together by the time I was fourteen.”

“You think that’s impressive? At fourteen I could speak French and create a five-course menu for twenty people.”

“You cook?”

“I created the menu. Cook cooked it.”

“Of course.”

She grinned. Sunshine. And when she slid her fingers over the rope of beads, this time he felt the slide of those fingers somewhere quite else. “And your mother?”

“She left when I was eleven. I haven’t seen her since. Hard being married to a man whose first love is big and blue. When the summer storms threaten to turn every boat inside out and upside down. When quotas laws changed, or the crops just weren’t there. He went back out there the next day and tried again, because that’s what men did.”

And there you have it, folks, he thought, dragging in a breath. Most he’d said about his own folks...probably ever. Locals understood. Rach hadn’t ever asked. While Avery dug it out of him with no more than a look.

Jonah shifted on his chair.

“My turn?” she said.

“Why the hell not?”

Grinning, this time less sunshine, more sass, she leaned down to wrap her lips around the edge of her glass, found it empty, left a perfect pink kiss in their place.

“My parents are both still around. Dad’s an investment banker, busy man, Yankees fan—” A quick fist-pump. “Go Yanks! My mother earned her living the Park Avenue way—divorce—and is a fan of spending Dad’s money. While I am the good daughter: cheerful, encouraging, conciliatory.”

Jonah struggled to imagine this caustic creature being conciliatory. Until he remembered her snuggling up to Claude, bouncing on her heels as she waved to Luke. Luke. He frowned. Forgot what he was thinking about, or more likely shoved it way down deep inside.

“Even my apartment is equidistant from both of theirs,” she went on.

“You’re Switzerland?”

She laughed.

Chin resting on her upturned palm, she said, “Between you and me and this dog who’s not yours, being Switzerland is exhausting. I didn’t realise how much Switzerland needed a break till I came here. You know what my mother is doing right this second? Organising a party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the divorce. Manhattan rooftop, over a hundred guests, yesterday she called to tell me about the comedian she’s hired to roast my father, who won’t even be there.”

The waiter came back with her wine, which she wrapped her hands around as if it were a life ring. “Worst part? She actually thought I’d be dying to help. As if my relationship with my father—such as it is—means nothing.”

Her eyes flickered, a pair of small lines creasing the skin above her nose. And when she shook her head, it was as if a flinty shell had crumbled to reveal a whole different Avery underneath. A woman trying to do the right thing in her small way against near impossible odds.

He got that.